INTERNATIONAL: Dictators’ Five Points

Dictators’ Five Points

Two years ago Adolf Hitler flew to Venice to clasp hands with Benito Mussolini. After a vegetarian lunch and a heart-to-heart the two Dictators found no matter of importance on which they could then cooperate. Meanwhile, Il Duce had conceived the project of making Italy, Britain, Germany and France the dominating hierarchy of Europe. These nations actually signed his Four-Power Pact only to quarrel over the Ethiopian war and Der Führer’s tearing up of the Treaty of Versailles. Last week began a great new effort by Italy and Germany to erect a European hierarchy with or without Britain or France, but definitely against Soviet Russia. This was all the more fate ful because Benito Mussolini was the first dictator to extend diplomatic recognition to the Soviet Union. Last week Il Duce was apparently ready to agree with Der Führer that the spread or curtailment of Communist influence in Europe has be come the cardinal question. To see about answering it, Mussolini sent to Berlin his recently-appointed Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, husband of the Dictator’s favorite child Edda.

Edda, Countess Ciano once swam two miles out to a warship her father was about to inspect, climbed aboard and made for the Dictator in the guise of a dripping mermaid. For this unseemly conduct she at once received a vigorous verbal dressing-down. High-spirited Edda promptly did a dangerous high-dive off the bridge of the warship, swam, the two miles back to shore, and afterward in private was praised for her spunk by the delighted Dictator. She is the only real intimate of a man now lonely in his greatness. Al though from time to time Il Duce snorts “My successor has yet to be born!1′, and although he probably believes there can be no successor to MUSSOLINI, he has, as a father, no objection to Daughter Edda’s unconcealed ambitions for her Galeazzo. She believes that when her father in the fullness of time has laid down the cares of Dictatorship, she will be the wife of the new Dictator and the real boss of Italy.

Dynamic Edda this-summer went to Berlin, was feted by Realmleader Hitler as if she had been visiting royalty, and returned to Rome with a photograph of Der Führer inscribed to Countess Ciano in the most complimentary terms. Today, at 33, Count Ciano is the youngest Foreign Minister of any Great Power, six years junior to Great Britain’s “handsome young” Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. Just before leaving Rome last week he was made a general in the Fascist Militia, arrived at Berlin with a gold eagle on his cap and gold epaulets on his shoulders, to be greeted with deafening German hells and an imposing turnout of Wilhelmstrasse officialdom headed by Foreign Minister Baron Constantin von Neurath. Thus strikingly Count Ciano made his debut on the world stage last week as Europe’s newest ranking statesman.

Ciano Career. Old hands at Statecraft consider that the young Count has had their metier’s most meteoric career. His vigorous father Count Costanzo Ciano, Admiral and longtime Minister of Communications, was one of Italy’s most conspicuous naval heroes of the War. In Fascism’s early days Father Ciano was the first Italian of national prominence to join struggling Editor Benito Mussolini and become a Fascist. Son Galeazzo was a Fascist zealot before he was out of his teens. After a law degree at the University of Rome, he became theatre and book reviewer on Nuovo Paese, the first Fascist newspaper in Rome, fought a duel with a Communist whom he gravely wounded, later signed the fellow up as a Fascist.

In 1925, three years after the March on Rome, Count Galeazzo decided to take examinations for the diplomatic service, which he barely passed. Then began his formative training. After routine duty in South America, he went to Peiping where he served under one of Italy’s great masters of diplomacy, Daniele Vare, the Minister to China and an eminent student of its lore. During this time Admiral Ciano, with the astuteness of an old campaigner, was on watch in Rome and when he found that Premier Mussolini was about to solve the “Roman Question” by making a treaty with Pope Pius XI, got Son Galeazzo recalled from China just in time to squeeze him into the Italian Embassy to the Holy See as First Secretary.

The good job he did there was the turning point of young Count Ciano’s life and he went on the upgrade with a passionate courtship of Edda Mussolini which was over in a few weeks. Soon after the wedding, bride and bridegroom sailed for Shanghai. There, presently, she had a son

Fabrizio, still called in the family “Little Chink.” Count Ciano, as Italian Consul General in Shanghai, became President of the League of Nations Commission which inquired into Japan’s bombardment of Shanghai at a time when “Little Chink” was a babe of five months. Promoted to Minister to China, the Count was sent to the London Economic Conference and. before President Roosevelt wrecked it, Ciano obscurely obtained the Conference’s only achievement, an adjustment of Italy’s Boxer Rebellion indemnity claims on China to the satisfaction of the Great Powers.

Back in Rome, the Cianos started cutting a social swath and Edda surprised the British colony with the “English” she had learned from U. S. Marine officers’ wives in Shanghai. One of the Countess’ expressions was “oakie doak.” Her husband at this time became Il Capo del Officia Stampa del Capo del Governo (The Head of the Press Office of the Head of the Government), later was given the rank of Minister for Press & Propaganda. He never could understand why foreign correspondents do not write with the same pro-Fascist zeal which came naturally to him when he was himself a reporter on the Rome Tribuna.

In propaganda neither Edda nor Galeazzo saw much future. When Il Duce got ready to start a war, they did, however, see that Count Ciano as an aviator dropped the first bombs, and was the first Italian to alight in Addis Ababa. He and the Dictator’s two bombing sons did so well at making headlines for themselves that Father Mussolini ordered that they never be mentioned again in this connection, lest they get swelled heads. Ciano, according to brother aviators, is an in different pilot, but recklessly brave. He eats more spaghetti, prepared with copious melted butter and cheese, than Edda thinks good for his figure. He seldom downs a cocktail, which Italians consider fattening, takes a glass or two of wine at every meal. When Father-in-law Mussolini went on what amounted to a fruit diet, so did Son-in-law Ciano, but his gastronomic passion at present is for fish.

In Rome he drives a roaring Alfa-Romeo five-passenger sedan and Edda’s friends go to him when they want a traffic ticket torn up. At 6:30 p.m. each day Foreign Minister Count Ciano stands before Dictator Mussolini for high-pressure contact on world affairs, then goes directly home to dinner or to one of the dazzling Roman social functions Edda likes. As soon as Italy and Germany began getting together on the question of helping the Spanish Whites (TIME, Aug. 24), a trip to Berlin loomed and young Count Ciano buckled down to study German furiously. To him languages come easily and Italy’s Foreign Minister was all set last week to converse with Dictator Adolf Hitler in the only language that statesman knows.

Ciano 6 Hitler-A diplomat can seldom do anything in the glare of publicity which he has not previously arranged in private, and last week Baron von Neurath and Count Ciano merely went over in Berlin the understandings to which Italy and Germany have come in recent weeks, more or less secretly. A special sleeping-car train then took them to Berchtesgaden, whence they drove to the chalet Haus Wachenfeld, the Bavarian snuggery of Der Führer. Corporal Hitler, in a plain brown tunic with a large swastika just above the left elbow, saluted General Ciano who returned the salute. They talked for four hours. Simultaneously in Rome congratulatory messages poured in upon King Vittorio Emanuele III and Queen Elena, for the day marked their 40th wedding anniversary.

It was Saturday, and Adolf Hitler is famed for springing what Nazis call his “Saturday surprises.” Abruptly Der Führer sprang a public announcement of the first of five points of agreement secretly reached between Germany and Italy. “The Führer and Chancellor,” he disclosed, “has informed the royal Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Ciano . . . that the Reich Government has decided formally to recognize the Italian Empire in Ethiopia.”*

While the staffs of Dictator Hitler and Count Ciano busied themselves drafting a further public announcement, Der Führer said good-by to the Foreign Minister and he was driven to Munich (“The Capital of the National Socialist Movement”) for afternoon parades and evening torchlight demonstrations. Son-in-law Ciano laid a wreath on the steps of the Heroes’ Temple in which are buried Storm Troopers killed in bloody German street brawls before the Nazis came to power. He laid another wreath on the monument marking the spot on which Government machine guns in 1923 opened fire on the “Beer Hall Putsch” followers of General Erich Ludendorff who marched on unscathed and Corporal Adolf Hitler who flung himself upon the ground, later escaped slightly wounded, only to be arrested and held for eight months in a fortress while he wrote Mein Kampf. In Munich, on this Nazi-hallowed ground, pink-cheeked Hitler Youths saluted Count Ciano and pink-cheeked Hitler Maidens offered him posies. Then with all Munich in carnival mood there was rollicking in the torchlit streets. Initialed Entente-Count Ciano, just before taking off from Munich for Rome, joined Baron von Neurath in handing out the text of an entente which they had initialed for Italy and Germany to signalize agreement last week on these points:

1) Germany, in return for recognizing Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia, is to receive trade concessions in the Empire.

2) Germany and Italy will pursue toward the League of Nations a common policy, presumably hostile.

3) Italy and Germany, while not actually breaking off relations with the Radical Madrid Government, agreed last week that the White Government whose troops were advancing on the capital “enjoys the firm support of the Spanish people in the majority of the provinces. . . .” Thus Rome and Berlin hinted their intention to recognize the Whites as the government of Spain as soon as Madrid should fall.

4) Germany obtains Italian support for her contention that Russia should be excluded from the drafting of a new Locarno Pact by Britain, Italy, France and Germany only. Belgium, which has just resumed her historic Neutrality, would also be left out; France would be virtually detached from her alliance with Russia; and the “New Locarno” would be a great step toward setting up the hierarchy envisioned by Il Duce’s Four Power Pact.

5) In the Danube countries, Germany and Italy will pursue their present economic and political expansion (TIME, July 20) with an effort not to interfere with each other’s schemes.

This week Premier Milan Stoyadinovich of Yugoslavia was reported so “frightened” by the Hitler-Ciano accord that he was about to throw over his country’s close ties with France and recognize Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia. Since Yugoslavia is the “historic foe” of Italy, such news from Belgrade rang like victory in Rome.

*Hitherto only Austria had extended formal recognition. Hungary has given de facto recognition by extending to the Italian Empire the benefit of her trade treaties with the Italian Kingdom. Turkey has withdrawn her Legation from Addis Ababa, placing its affairs in the hands of the Italian Viceroy.